Book reviews by Mobilism's Book Review team
Feb 23rd, 2015, 5:00 pm
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TITLE: Heft
AUTHOR: Liz Moore
GENRE: General Fiction
PUBLISHED: January 23, 2012
RATING: ★★★★★
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon.com
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism

Description: Former academic Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and hasn't left his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade. Twenty miles away, in Yonkers, seventeen-year-old Kel Keller navigates life as the poor kid in a rich school and pins his hopes on what seems like a promising baseball career—if he can untangle himself from his family drama. The link between this unlikely pair is Kel’s mother, Charlene, a former student of Arthur’s. After nearly two decades of silence, it is Charlene’s unexpected phone call to Arthur—a plea for help—that jostles them into action. Through Arthur and Kel’s own quirky and lovable voices, Heft tells the winning story of two improbable heroes whose sudden connection transforms both their lives. Like Elizabeth McCracken’s The Giant’s House, Heft is a novel about love and family found in the most unexpected places.

Review: If you have read some of my reviews, you know I am charmed by people on the fringe of society in some way. The unloved, the unlovely, the homeless, circus freaks, junkies, death-row inmates, pedophiles, opium smokers, bulimics, bipolar, either somewhere in history or present day - bring them on, I want to read about them all. I am also partial to novels who introduce the reader to a few key characters we can get to know very intimately. I tend to lose interest in novels with dozens of faceless characters who come and go, some never to return, and you never get a feeling of who they are. Well, this novel met all my criteria, it seemed to have a simple, well sketched cast of characters, and I found myself definitely wanting to read more about some lonely oddball who is morbidly obese. If that sounds good to you too, keep reading.

Although, once I started reading it, I realized the synopsis of the novel doesn't do Heft justice. No back cover summary could capture the solid, quiet, nearly stately charm of Arthur Opp. No blurb could possibly capture the bizarre, unlovely, desperate aura of Charlene Keller. No, you have to give it a chance and read it yourself. Action fans: you won't find much here. This is definitely a character-driven novel, you read it not for the action, mystery and suspense - because there is little to none - you read this novel to spend time with the characters. It's like going over to spend time with a dear friend just to hang out - you just want to spend time with them and know you'll have a good time no matter what you end up doing.

In Heft, Liz Moore has created two separate protagonists, using two different first-person voices, and their initial connection is only through the reader. Other than We Are Called to Rise (which I reviewed here), this is one of very few times that I have read a book written by multiple viewpoints where I have adored each protagonist, and also liked every secondary single character introduced. Again, as I said earlier, I don't know if I can adequately describe the charm of Arthur Opp, Charlene, Kel and Yolanda - when I closed the book, I felt as if they had become old friends.

Heft begins as a letter. The primary protagonist, Arthur Opp, is charmingly honest with the reader right away. In this letter, he confesses he had previously not been honest about his circumstances, and confesses he has gotten fat. He further confesses that he is enormously fat - well over 550 pounds - and that he is a lonely recluse who hasn't left his home for many years...
"The first thing you must know about me is that I am colossally fat. When I knew you I was what one might call plump but I am no longer plump. I eat what I want & furthermore I eat whenever I want. For years I have made very little effort to reduce the amount that I eat for I have seen no cause to. Despite this I am neither immobile nor bedridden but I do feel winded when I walk more than six or seven steps, & I do feel very shy and sort of incased in something as if I were a cello or an expensive gun."

Arthur is a lonely man. He was an unloved son of a famous architect: his mother and friends have since passed away, his father lives abroad with a new family. Arthur doesn't need to worry about money, so his reluctance to go outside doesn't present a problem. However, in the past, he was a college professor, and that is how he met the subject of his correspondence, and the object of his longstanding interest - Charlene Turner Keller. Charlene was a student for a brief period of time who first became a dear friend, then a love interest (at least from Arthur's point of view). But unfortunately, Charlene moved away, and their relationship consisted of correspondence. However, the letters kept coming - for ten years, then abruptly ceased. Poor Arthur was stuck in his house, thinking about her constantly and what had happened to her. Even though she is "unlovely", and dresses and acts oddly, Arthur remembers her so fondly he made me love her too:
When I was a child. When I was unborn. I felt destined for solitude, very certain that one day it would find me, so when it did I was not surprised & even welcomed it. Throughout my life I have met only one person with whom I felt a certain kinship in this regard, and it was Charlene. From the moment I met her I thought—you too? And I could see by the look in her eyes that she also felt it. She was more lonely at the time than I, I could sense it, and it made me love her.

Last night, in my sorrow, I went into the drawer of my bedside table for the ten-thousandth time & from it I took out her stack of letters. Then I found what I was looking for: the letter in which she first suggested that we meet. & I allowed my mind to drift back through years & years, to the sense of possibility I felt when I first received that letter, the glimpse into a future very different than the one that, as it turned out, lay before me. I recalled our dinners together, our lunches, the glory of sitting across a table from a woman. Each time I saw her, I felt more & more convinced that she understood something about me, & I her.

This feeling in me was solidified the first time we went out for dinner & she ordered several things & ate them unselfconsciously. It was roast beef she was having, & she cut it into little precise squares first, & dipped them into their sauce, & then chewed them with her mouth open sometimes, looking all around the room. She drank too much. She had three rum and Cokes. It seemed like a childish drink to me. I was having water. I’ve never drunk very much. I was having water and shepherd’s pie that at first I tried to eat delicately, but she was so oblivious to me, still, that I relaxed.

She became quiet halfway through the meal. I asked her was she upset about something but she would not tell me at first. Then after a while she took her glasses off—I can see this motion still, hazily, as if in a dream—and put her fingers on the bridge of her nose. Then she turned her face toward me & put both her hands up to it. One on her forehead. One on her cheek. Her hair was down around her shoulders that night and lazily it slid off of one of them & down her back.

“I’m invisible,” she said to me. “I’m really invisible.” A very fat tear rolled down her cheek, the saddest tear I’ve ever seen, & I had and resisted the urge to touch it.

Before she stops writing to Arthur, Charlene's letters often mention her son, Kel Keller, now a teenager. Kel is the secondary protagonist in the novel, telling his own story in some of the chapters. Kel wants to be a professional baseball player, and he actually has some talent and promise in that area, much of his narrative includes his passion for baseball. A third character, Yolanda, is mentioned very often but never speaks to us directly, but is seen only through Arthur's eyes. Yolanda is a 19 year old pregnant girl who initially comes to clean Arthur's house and although they don't seem to have much in common at first, she quickly becomes his friend. There are a few secondary characters, but really these four characters (Arthur, Charlene, Kel & Yolanda) were the focus of the novel and I found it lovely to focus on four characters I liked so much. I adored Yolanda's matter-of-fact way of dealing with Arthur, her encouragement, her honesty, and the fact that she got him out of the house for the first time in ten years!
Prospect Park is less than 1 block from my brownstone. But the walk is an uphill one, and then there is Prospect Park West to cross, & then to get inside the park one must fight one’s way across an interior road around which cyclists and runners come careening all day long & in every kind of weather. When I was younger I made this walk routinely, with Marty, who lived next door & would drag me out from time to time, or even, some very good & virtuous days, by myself.

But this morning it seemed like Mt. Everest. I imagined that traffic had increased substantially since the last time I had been there. I thought perhaps I would die if I tried to walk it but more than that I was afraid of being embarrassed in front of the girl. I can barely walk ten level steps, I thought to myself. I can barely walk from my couch to the kitchen.

“I gotta warn you,” said Yolanda. “I’m slow right now.”
The girl is a mind reader, I sometimes think.
“I’m slow,” I said. “Too.”

I don’t think she knew the extent to which I had not been outside. But perhaps I am fooling myself.
I fetched my coat from out of the closet by the door. It was a coat I had not worn for years & I was afraid it wouldn’t fit so I tried it on when Yolanda wasn’t looking, & by some miracle it worked. It is a handsome coat & high quality. It is a nice gray trench that can be worn in the sun or the rain, and it has a tie that I let hang down by my sides.
Yolanda was the one to open the door.
“Yum,” she said. “It smells like winter.”
Indeed it did. When she had opened the outer door too I inhaled deeply and smelled the park from where I stood: the smell of cold air & fresh things dying. A lovely lonely smell.
“Come on,” said Yolanda, and I looked into her sweet face & saw my own mother. So clearly that I almost wept.
“Really,” I whispered, “I’m very slow.”
She looked down at her belly and rolled her eyes. “You and me both,” she said. “For real.”
She walked down one step and turned around. I took my cane from where it was propped just inside the door: I rarely use it, for it is an outdoor cane.
“This for protection,” I said. “In case of assailants.”
It was a joke.
“Come on, Mr Arthur,” said Yolanda again, & again I had a vision of my mother, inviting me into a swimming pool at somebody’s house in the suburbs when I was maybe four. Come, Arthur, she said. Come here. The flick of the wrist. The echoing voice. The beckoning hand.
I stepped outside.
It was warm for December, just as she had said it would be.

Overall, I feel that Heft is a very readable novel. For anyone curious, Arthur and Kel finally meet in the final chapter, and their connection becomes clearer, but it is a meeting we never get to see because that point is also where Heft ends - so we are left to imagine the future of these characters. I loved Arthur, Charlene, Kel and Yolanda, I was sad to see the book end. I would love to read a sequel to this novel.

I think anyone would love to get to know Arthur Opp, I recommend this book for all, I have reread it several times.
Feb 23rd, 2015, 5:00 pm
Feb 25th, 2015, 2:42 pm
Nice Book
Feb 25th, 2015, 2:42 pm

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Mar 23rd, 2015, 11:53 pm
Another wonderful review Tigerlilly.
This was one of my first audiobooks. I listend to it about a year ago . Very memorable and it's up there with my favorites.
Although a very dysfunctional obese recluse, Arthur was a very likable character and Moore did a wonderful job at somehow making this an uplifting read.
It was nice to read your review and to be reminder of why I so much loved this book.
Mar 23rd, 2015, 11:53 pm